


And The Bells Were Ringing Out

by Slashy Goodness (allmadhere)



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-27
Updated: 2010-03-27
Packaged: 2017-10-08 08:39:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allmadhere/pseuds/Slashy%20Goodness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick had flat-out refused to sign with Decaydance, especially when all the other labels came courting after a few of his covers circulated the web a bit more. Pete had sulked, and he could certainly and freely admit it was sulking, for weeks through the contract negotiations and signing. Sure, it left Patrick free to work on Fall Out Boy again when they were all ready to and Island had yet to chew them out for it and Patrick had been enthusiastic beyond the words "dream come true" and "only Berry Gordy could make this better". Pete should be nothing less than happy for his best friend. He should and yet he wasn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And The Bells Were Ringing Out

**Author's Note:**

> For an ages-old prompt on anon_lovefest and finally finished. Based on the song Fairytale of New York by The Pogues, from which it nicks its title and cut. This is extremely close to canon/life, to the point that I wrote things AND THEN THEY HAPPENED. You'll know when you get there. Let's just say, Patrick wasn't first choice, Gabe was. Anyways, is done and I'm glad.

Pete pulled the hood tighter around his face, feeling utterly ridiculous in his puffed out down jacket, hoodie, and oversized shades. He was going to roll his eyes the minute he stepped off the plane, Pete knew it. Maybe the giggling girls on the other side of the waiting area knew it too, because they seemed to find this whole thing far too entertaining as they glimpsed at him over books and laptops. At least they weren't snapping pictures of him yet. The PA system cheerily announced that the delayed flight from O'Hare would be disembarking shortly. The entire room breathed a sigh of relief, Pete included, that he didn't think they knew they'd been holding. It was only a few days before Christmas and everyone wanted to be home with their families and finishing last minute gift purchases. Poor Patrick was being forced into a recording studio almost through the holiday, thanks to the good upper management of Universal Motown Records.

Patrick had flat-out refused to sign with Decaydance, especially when all the other labels came courting after a few of his covers circulated the web a bit more. Pete had sulked, and he could certainly and freely admit it was sulking, for weeks through the contract negotiations and signing. Sure, it left Patrick free to work on Fall Out Boy again when they were all ready to and Island had yet to chew them out for it and Patrick had been enthusiastic beyond the words "dream come true" and "only Berry Gordy could make this better". Pete should be nothing less than happy for his best friend. He should and yet he wasn't. If Patrick asked during that week, he would say it was because the unfathomable tyrants were stealing poor Patrick away from his home and family in Chicago. Didn't they know what Christmas was all about? Patrick would maybe give him a quick unreadable look before rolling his eyes and punching Pete. The flimsy and frail little excuse would hold. Patrick wouldn't ask why he, Ashlee, and Bronx weren't on a plane bound for ORD or DFW instead of staying in the crawling urban sprawl of New York. Pete wouldn't press too much about why Patrick agreed to record now.

Patrick's one of the first down the long escalator, thanks to the perks of flying first class. They stared intently at each other for just a heartbeat before Pete quirked his lips and Patrick rolled his eyes and they were hugging like it had been months and years apart and not days. It felt like a little bit of home had come to Pete in the desert of Metropolis, making his heart swell and ache at the same time. It was probably what had forced the words out of his throat.

"So what, no Elisa this time?" The glare Patrick shot him might have been short-lived but it was like a gunshot, damaging long after the noise and smoke had dissipated. He gave a sheepish little grin as he led the way to the luggage carousel. It was a silent wait as the myriad of suitcases and bags wound by, disappearing as their owners came and went. Patrick's was one of the last out. "Still the same old Rick," he muttered under his breath, maybe smirking just a little.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Patrick huffed as he lifted his large and apparently heavy bag and plopped it to the linoleum floor with a clack of the wheels. "Of course I'm the same as I was, you know, maybe a month ago when I saw you at Thanksgiving." The same as when Pete had shown up at Patrick's home in Chicago, he mused, with bottle of wine to go with dinner in one hand and a recording contract in the other. When Patrick had struggled to say too many things and left so many on the floor. When Pete had glared and stormed out, slamming the door, and got home just in time to regret it all.

"It means I thought maybe you'd be someone else wearing a Patrick suit when you got here," Pete mumbled with half a hope that he couldn't hear in the distraction of resettling his token hat, a trucker that might be as old as it looked. "I thought you might only be an unfunny parody of yourself, not the real thing; a real life Dr. Benzedrine." The hand on his shoulder was just heavy enough to feel through all the layers. Pete just caught the worried look before Patrick hid it under the thin veil of a smile.

"I don't plan to start shoving any pills down your throat while I'm here," he replied wryly, "or anything else. Let's just get out of here and to your apartment, okay?" He sighed, suddenly older and world weary, tired in ways he shouldn't be so soon and so close to Christmas. Pete hoped it was just a bout of stress and that he could do something about it, rather than be a main cause.

 

True to form, Pete was invited to all the parties falling just under A-list in New York on Christmas Eve. When he invited Patrick to come with, he declined to stay in and work on songs and video chat with his girlfriend like they were high school sweethearts separated for their freshman year of college. So Pete hit the town alone and he hit it hard, in a way that he hadn't since that last batch of clumpy red dye had faded and the realization that punching things like walls and cars would catch up one day finally settled. He had stumbled into the place off Times Square, just ritzy enough to not be a dive but hardly top shelf, at around 11pm, or so everyone said. He was only a handful of free drinks into this party, not even pretending to shmooze anymore, when it happened. It was a passing, snide, backhanded compliment of the sort you always overhear at parties, especially parties chock-full of the pretentious and superficial. Here in New York, however, they seem less worried that they will be overheard by the wrong person and the vitriol spilled forth freely and with little hesitation. In LA, at least, they glanced around quickly first.

Normally Pete would ignore guys who tried to provoke him, peering at him out the corner of their eye and talking in something only just qualifying as a stage whisper. Pete had been doing a good job of it too, before the annoying hipster had rolled his eyes and said, "have you seen that fat lead singer of his lately? Fucking anorexic and trying to convince the world he can actually sing? What a fucking joke. Bet it's the same old emo bullshit as before, maybe with some autotune or some shitty Garage Band effects." Pete stewed through approximately thirty seconds of obnoxious laughter, just long enough to drain what's left of his Jack and Coke and slam the glass down on the bar.

"You're not funny," Pete slurred, throwing a fuzzy glare at the guy in his overly expensive and high-end streetwear that looked freshly picked from the dumpster or salvaged from the local thrift store. "I'm right fucking here and you still talk shit about my best friend? You don't hear me calling you and your girlfriend out on your iPhones connecting straight to tumblrs full of Palahniuk quotes and sardonic internet memes." Pete pushed himself away from the bar and stood shakily to face his hipster nemesis with his raised eyebrow and cynical smirk.

"And what are you going to do about it, emo boy?" he sneered back, eyes flicking over Pete and seeming to spark when he noted the distinct lack of security. "Cry in a corner like a little bitch and wait for your hair to grow back?" The laugh he let out was too much like Pete's own, an annoying bark that rattled and echoed, at least in his skull.

Pete honestly didn't remember throwing the first punch, the running charge he must have taken, the screech they said he'd let out. All he remembered was the satisfying thwack as his fist connected with the guy's nose and cheek, the trickle of blood bold on the faux marble floor, the screams and shouts at him, the arms pulling him roughly away, kicking and fighting to pound all his frustrations into this guy's flesh. He blamed the loss of the memory on the alcohol, along with his impaired judgment.

The next thing to filter through was the bar owner's voice, the one who invited him to the event in the first place, yelling that he never wanted to see his sorry ass in the bar again. The bouncer hauled him up roughly and dragged him to the street, where a cop car awaited with its door already open. The drive to the station was a short one and it felt it. Pete was far from sober but he didn't fight against going into the holding cell and sank slowly to the grimy floor.

"You know," came a slow, thick voice from across the cell, "I might not live to see another Christmas. And where do I end up spending it? In a goddamned holding cell." Pete looked up to catch the wistfully look and sigh of the old man reclining on the bench in the opposite corner. "You know, I wasn't always like this, a drunk homeless guy rambling on in the company of New York's finest. I had a good life once. Wife, kids, good and secure job, little suburban dream home, quality American dream stuff. But it wasn't what made me happy. The wife and I got a divorce." He sighed again and closed his eyes. "She took the kids with her and moved in with her mother. I sort of lost it after that, got fired, and tried to drink all the pain away." Pete cringed at the familiarity of that ending. "Hey, kid." Pete looked up and the man was giving him the lopsided smile of those in need of distraction, the skin around his eyes crinkling from past mirth. "Know any good songs?"

 

Patrick told him later that he and Ashlee had been sitting on the floor with Bronx, teaching the baby Christmas songs to no avail if his serious and unblinking little eyes were anything to go by. Patrick was strumming at his acoustic and Ashlee answered the phone. Patrick said she looked tired when she came back. "Pete's been arrested for being drunk and disorderly." She pinched at the bridge of her nose.

"Shouldn't he have grown out of that by now?" Patrick sighed and shared a look with Bronx, who only blinked at him before standing and tottering towards his corner of scrambled toys and miniature instruments. His hands were on a downswing aimed straight for the tiny snare when Ashlee scooped him up.

She gave him a wry little smile, like they were in on the same joke and Pete supposed they were. Aside from his parents, they knew him best. "You would think so, wouldn't you? You'll have to go get him. If for no other reason then I'll only draw more attention to the whole thing." A brief pause weighted the air until she blurted out, "and he asked for you to come. Something about tit for tat?" She rolled her eyes and bounced Bronx on her hip.

"Asshole," he muttered and squinted at nothing, "goddamned fucking asshole."

"Not in front of the baby, " Ashlee chided easily.

 

Pete was staring up at the ceiling and its bare bulb when Patrick arrived, his clear voice carrying all the way to him in the cell. If this were a movie, one of the officers would be there in a moment to unlock the door. Pete would fly into Patrick's arms and the sheer number of kisses he'd shower onto that not-as-round face would probably make him blush and stutter a little as he made the last signature on the paperwork that would allow them to return home. Once there, they would have a happy ending that could even make Disney vomit. This, however, was far from that movie.

Patrick was frowning at Pete, arms folded across his chest and foot tapping impatiently, as he walked out of holding. The frown deepened the moment they locked eyes and Pete just knew he wouldn't be able to charm himself back into Patrick's good graces any time soon. Life was going to be very hard for at least a few days, maybe even until Patrick went back home. He smirked lopsidedly anyway, just to see if it would work, and only received a tiny sneer.

"Come on, Wentz, it's cold out and I'm supposed to be chatting with Elisa," he snapped, turning on his heel to stare out the small window. "Hurry up, they're saying it's supposed to snow soon."

"Who says it's supposed to snow?" Pete scoffed as he bundled himself back into his coat and began winding his scarf around his neck. "You know, the local news station's wrong, like, half the time. Yesterday, they said--"

"It was the goddamned cops who picked your drunken ass up from the bar you decided to fight some guy in who told me it was going to snow," Patrick spat out and an intense hush fell over the room. "I think they have a fairly good grasp of the weather," he finished a little more quietly.

"Sorry, Rick," he whispered, suddenly perfectly sober and serious and miserable like the adult he wasn't entirely prepared to be. "I didn't-- I just--. Let's just go, okay?" The fight seemed the just drain away, what he was assuming had been excess adrenaline from defending to man who stood waiting like an impatient parent as he tugged on the ends of his scarf. He felt like a kid again as he shifted nervously from foot to foot for a moment before remembering he hadn't done anything to deserve this abuse, barring an arrest. He glared at Patrick through narrowed eyes before squaring his shoulders and leading the way out into the cold.

 

They had been walking up Broadway for ten long cold minutes and every single cab that had passed by was taken, be it by raucous groups of supposed friends or solitary figures curled into the fake leather of the back seat. Patrick frowned at each taxi the sped by and ignored his outstretched arm. Pete just watched his anger build in the same morbidly curious way people watch a building go down in flames. He honestly couldn't help staring as little wispy licks of flame curled from the smoldering pile like Patrick's hair snuck from under his hat and blew in the wind.

Pete knew it would be a horrible moment to say or do anything, just like he knew that gravity existed because he wasn't choking for air in the upper atmosphere, but he still couldn't help it as words spilled out of his mouth. "Maybe if you stick out a little leg, they'll stop." He was a few paces behind Patrick, who stopped and turned very slowly with murder in his eyes.

"You fucking asshole," he started in a slow rumble, "do you have to make everything a goddamned joke or some tangled fucking mess of an allegory? Is that just what you have to fucking do or something?" He stalked towards Pete, who was only able to retreat a handful of tentative little steps before he was snagged by his collar and pulled close. The angry red color in Patrick's cheeks was deepening by the second, every last drop of his Irish-American heritage on full display. "It's you and your fucking bullshit, Wentz!" he hissed. "Since the fucking day I met you. And who's had to clean it up, clean you up, when it hits the fan? Me!" He shouted and Pete flinched flinched away, the hangover already planted and just beginning to bloom in his skull. There wasn't enough room for his problems and frustrations and Patrick yelling at once; it would have to go somewhere, fast and nowrightnow, there was only one outlet.

"Fuck you," he spat back and shoved at Patrick's unmoving, solid shoulders. Under normal circumstances, he would appreciate how like a rock the other man was, a sturdy instance in the constantly turbulent waters that comprised Pete's existence. "Fuck you," he repeated louder, yanking Patrick's fingers from the dark wool of his coat. "No one fucking asked you to be the maid of my life! No came to you and said 'oh, hey, Patrick, this utter fucking wreck of a human being is going to waltz into your life and offer you the world on a silver platter proffered by high class Vegas hookers but really he just needs you to be his nanny', did they?" Patrick merely scowled in response, only just making the pissed expression he was aiming for with that cherubic face of his. Pete could feel the ugly look contorting his features as they stared each other down, right there on the sidewalk. It didn't last long, the air tense and heavy on his exposed skin despite the cold, or possibly because of it, and he couldn't take it for very long. In less than a minute, he growled and sneered before storming off towards the best place to clear his head in this burg of ironic artificiality.

"And just where the fuck do you think you're going?" Patrick called after him as he all but ran away. "Pete. Pete!" He could tell Patrick was refusing to move, to run after him, for now at least but he wouldn't look back to be sure. There was absolutely no way of knowing what could happen if he looked back. He kept his head down and let his feet guide him into Central Park.

He moved along just below fast enough not to draw unnecessary attention, letting the handful of people and cars on the street blur thanks to the gently falling snow as he left Times Square and moved back into the reality of the city. He could hear Patrick huffing behind him over the din of city noise as he waited for the traffic light to change but he ignored it. Rather, his body ignored it while his brain fixated, gauging whether he'd be running long (he hadn't) or had stopped when Pete was in sight (he probably had). It only added to Pete's frustrations. Soon enough, he was exactly where he needed to be, standing in front of one of the many statues. This one was the Alice in Wonderland one, with the Buddha-like Alice seated on her mushroom. He simply stood and took it in, eyes flickering from Alice's serene face to Dinah to the Mad Hatter's laughing visage to the grinning Cheshire Cat to the White Rabbit with his pocket watch to the Dormouse and round again. He was just beginning to contemplate the greater mysteries of the Mad Hatter's smile, which was less mad and more sly and conniving, when Patrick huffed to a stop just behind him.

"I guess the Wii Fit really is working wonders for you," Pete remarked, sneering at Alice's calm face without turning around. "A few months ago, that would have definitely taken you longer and you'd be out of breath. Nice to know some things work as advertised once in a while, huh?"

"Why are you being such an asshole, Pete?" he sighed, sounding tired again. "And I don't just mean tonight, even if this has been the worst of it. The entire time I've been here, since I fucking landed, you've been a total dick. It's like you think I've done something to you and fucked if I know what it even is. So go ahead and enlighten me."

"You want the truth, Rick? Some of my brutal honesty, no metaphor and no poetry?" Patrick just crosses his arms over his chest in reply. "I'm pissed the fuck off. Nothing's made me happy for more than a few hours in weeks. If I'm being totally honest with myself, months. And you know why? Because I'm drifting, fucking drifting away from everything and everyone and it's like there's not shit I can do about it. I just have to watch everyone get reduced to pinpricks on the horizon. Fuck, if you even knew how many cryptic fucking blogs full of half-true emo-ass bullshit I've written--."

"Yeah, I can imagine. But that shit's not going to cut it, Wentz. You're not mad at the world, you're just pretending to be to hide some ridiculous insecurity and you're shit at hiding it. You're not Hurley; you wear your heart of your fucking sleeve. So what--."

"I'm fucking losing you, okay?" Pete huffed out a sigh and folded into himself a bit, still refusing to turn around. "I'm losing you and I can see it but I can't make it stop, like I don't have arms and a mouth or something. Except I do but all it seems capable of doing is pushing you further away and I just... I don't fucking want that, okay?" Pete squeezed his eyes shut tight before opening them again. "You know what, forget it. Let's just go back so you can have your fucking video chat or whatever and get ready to record."

"No." Patrick crowded his back, making Pete fleetingly wish he were an armadillo so he could just cower in a little protective ball. "How do you think you're losing me? I'm right here, Pete, and I have been since I was 16." Patrick wrapped his arms around him and Pete felt his traitorous body melt back into the comforting solid warmth. "Hmmm, and to think, we didn't even have to come to blows."

"No," Pete admitted, "but it maybe would have been better than way. I just... I feel like we're not even here anymore, like we're just actors playing ourselves and doing a shit job at it." Patrick hummed and, for the first time in a long time, he thought Patrick might actually understand. "I wish I could go back to the way we used to be," he whispered, watching the floating puffs of his breath, "when we first started this whole thing and before we were famous and were just us. Maybe I could do something so we'd never lose the spark."

"We didn't lose it, we just grew up," Patrick whispered back. "Older and hopefully wiser, all that shit. If we'd lost it, I'm pretty sure at least some of our fans would have noticed it long before we would." Pete turned in Patrick's arms, staring at him for a long moment before slowly planting a kiss of the corner of his mouth. "What was that for?" Patrick asked in a slight daze.

"Everything and nothing at all. Let's get home, I'm freezing."


End file.
